Gibson must have been eager to get things out in the open: the actor says in court papers he has been officially separated from his wife for more than two and a half years. Grigorieva, signed to Gibson's Icon Records, is herself said separated from Dalton. There were already property records tying the two together, and blurry photographs of a jaunt in Costa Rica (tied to Grigorieva in the Russian press), so it's not like the pair were a complete secret from the world.

Still, Gibson apparently has for years kept his split from his wife under wraps. The breakup dates from the weeks just after the star's anti-semitic tirade against Los Angeles sheriff's deputies. Had it been exposed at the time, it might have dealt his image a particularly damaging double blow.

Now that Gibson's wife has forced the matter into the public eye, taking the Grigorieva relationship public is a way for the actor to underline that he has nothing to hide — and that his life is not as lonely as pathetic as you might expect for an alcoholic anti-Semite ditched by his wife.